{"id":97407,"date":"2026-05-25T10:25:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T07:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=97407"},"modified":"2026-05-25T10:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T07:30:11","slug":"keyrock-identifies-cryptocurrencies-as-financial-base-for-ai-agents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/keyrock-identifies-cryptocurrencies-as-financial-base-for-ai-agents\/","title":{"rendered":"Keyrock Identifies Cryptocurrencies as Financial Base for AI Agents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cryptocurrency payments are emerging as the settlement layer for AI agents, as the infrastructure of payment cards is ill-suited for microtransactions, according to a report by <a href=\"https:\/\/keyrock.com\/who-pays-the-agent\/\">Keyrock<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>From May 2025 to April 2026, AI agents conducted over 176 million on-chain transactions amounting to more than $73 million. Nearly all settlements were made in <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/what-is-the-usdc-stablecoin\">USDC<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The primary demand is for the payment of data, computing power, <span data-descr=\"application programming interface\" class=\"old_tooltip\">API<\/span>, and content without human involvement. An example provided is a trading agent that automatically settles small amounts for market data and cloud infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>Keyrock identified four architectures for agent payments:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/coinbase-unveils-payment-technology-for-ai-agents\">x402 by Coinbase<\/a>;<\/li>\n<li>Machine Payments Protocol by Stripe and Tempo;<\/li>\n<li>Agent Payments Protocol by Google;<\/li>\n<li>Visa&#8217;s card infrastructure for AI commerce.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The company believes these solutions form a new payment stack. Coinbase and Stripe already cover five out of its six layers.<\/p>\n<p>Major players have directed over $8 billion towards deals and the development of agent transaction infrastructure. The segment received an additional boost following the <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/coinbase-and-stripe-to-facilitate-amazons-ai-agent-payment-launch\">launch<\/a> of AWS Bedrock AgentCore Payments in preview mode. Coinbase and Stripe were the first partners of the service.<\/p>\n<p>According to Gartner&#8217;s forecast, by 2028 AI agents could mediate purchases worth $15 trillion. McKinsey estimates the retail agent commerce market to be $3\u20135 trillion by 2030.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier in May, Solana Foundation, in collaboration with Google Cloud, <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/solana-foundation-and-google-cloud-launch-payment-system-for-ai-bots\">launched<\/a> a payment system for AI agents \u2014 Pay.sh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cryptocurrency payments are emerging as the settlement layer for AI agents, as the infrastructure of payment cards is ill-suited for microtransactions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"Cryptocurrency payments are becoming the settlement layer for AI agents.","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1751,438,1198],"class_list":["post-97407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-ai-agents","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-crypto-payments"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"16","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"Cryptocurrency payments are becoming the settlement layer for AI agents.","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97409,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97407\/revisions\/97409"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}